Bush seeks Europe's aid in Iraq

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Anti-government fighters launched attacks in Iraq's strife-ridden city of Baquba yesterday, leaving nine dead, six of them insurgents.

US and Iraqi officials said attacks also occurred in other cities north and south of Baghdad, as insurgents kept up a bloody drive to derail the transition to an interim government in four days' time.

The attacks in Baquba, 55 kilometres north-east of Baghdad, came just two days after US tanks and jets routed insurgents who attacked police stations and Government offices there during a wider offensive that killed about 100 people nationwide.

In yesterday's attacks, rebels targeted offices of two political parties - one of them run by the Prime Minister - a police station and a Government building.

A taxi apparently filled with weapons and ammunition blew up about 250 metres from one of the party offices attacked earlier, witnesses said.

Elsewhere, insurgents killed two Iraqi national guardsmen in an ambush in Mahmoudiyah, about 30 kilometres south of Baghdad.

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A car bomb in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil injured the culture minister of the pro-American Kurdistan Democratic Party, killing his bodyguard and injuring 15 people - four of them children.

In another attack in the north, gunmen ambushed a police patrol 30 kilometres south of Kirkuk yesterday, killing one policeman and wounding another.

And the US military said an American soldier died of his wounds after an ambush in Baghdad earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, thousands marched through the heart of the Irish capital Dublin to protest against the arrival of US President George Bush, who is in Ireland to rally European Union support for the US mission in Iraq.

Rallying under the "Stop Bush Campaign" banner, about 10,000 people waved placards and banners denouncing Mr Bush as a warmonger and calling for the transit permission for American military flights to be withdrawn from Shannon Airport. Shannon is a strategic refuelling point used by thousands of US troops each month.

The protesters marched from the north of the capital to the office of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose decision to keep the airport available for Iraq-bound forces has angered many in an officially neutral nation.

"Vote that son of a Bush out," read one placard. Dublin Mayor Andrew Montague told the crowd: "This President lied to the world about the reasons for invading Iraq."

Opening a summit in Dromoland Castle, Mr Bush urged the international community to put bitter debates over the war behind it and unite to help Iraq gain stability.

NATO leaders, including Mr Bush, meet in Istanbul tomorrow and on Tuesday they are expected to agree in principle to help train Iraqi security forces. That would be far short of the original US goal of having NATO troops help with security.